The Nature of Things

This is another series I have avidly followed over the years. Dr. Siri, the one-time state coroner, now retired, of Laos, has been a delightful companion through all the previous fourteen books of the series, but now the author and publisher tell us number fifteen will be the last. I'm thinking that is probably a good thing. This one seemed a bit stale and the plot is basically the same one that has served the author well throughout the series, but perhaps it is time to give it a rest. It is 1981 and Laos is still struggling to make a go of its newly installed socialist government. That was the revolution that Siri and his best friend Civilai and his now-wife Madame Daeng had supported and fought for during all the years of the struggle. But their victory has been bittersweet. Corruption is rampant in the new government and it has not brought the succor and relief to the ordinary citizens of the country that the revolutionaries had once dreamed of. Now, both Siri and the twentieth ...

I did not enjoy reading this book. It was not that the writing was bad; it was more than adequate, up to Colin Cotterill's usual standards. It was not that I didn't like the characters; Dr. Siri Paiboun and his merry band of disrupters in mid-1970s Laos are among my favorite characters in today's fiction and they were all present here, although Dr. Siri was much less prominent than he is in many of the books in the series. No, my problem with the book was its subject matter. I don't have many rules about what I will or won't read. I tend to be pretty eclectic in my choice of reading materials. But there are a few things that I try to avoid, simply because reading about them is so painful for me. Chief among these subjects are the torture, murder, and trafficking of animals and children. It is such crimes that are at the heart of Don't Eat Me .  You can't say I wasn't forewarned. The prologue features a young woman locked in a crate with starving civets w...

Dr. Siri Paiboun and his posse are on the loose again, headed for another adventure. This time in Moscow at the 1980 Olympics. Dr. Siri and his wife Madame Daeng, nurse Dtui, and Siri's best friend Civilai are all drafted to accompany Laos' Olympic athletes as managers, medical personnel, or chaperones and to travel with them to the great event. Laos had never competed in the Olympics before, but, in 1980 when the games were held in Moscow, many countries, including the United States, boycotted them because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan; consequently, the Soviet Union had invited many smaller countries to participate and fill out the bill. Laos enthusiastically agreed. Not that the little nation had many Olympic-caliber athletes or even the smallest hope of taking home a medal. They were just delighted to be asked. In the end, they were able to put together a rifle team from their military, boxers, and a track and field - well, mostly track - team. Their ent...

Dr. Siri Paiboun is one of my favorite characters from an ongoing series. The series is set in Laos in the 1970s. Dr. Siri and his wife Madame Daeng fought for many years to free their country from foreign domination and to establish a communist government that would provide justice and equality for all citizens. The Pathet Lao were ultimately successful in their struggle and the communist government was established, but it hasn't quite worked out as Dr. Siri and the others who fought for it had hoped. Dr. Siri is now nearing eighty. After the revolution, he served for a few years as the country's coroner, but finally he was allowed to retire. However, he hasn't retired from solving mysteries and from pursuing adventure. Siri is surrounded by a coterie, one might call it an entourage, of quirky characters, starting with his wife, the noodle shop proprietor, who assist him in his adventures. They include his former co-workers at the morgue, a Vientiane policeman, and a forme...

Six and a Half Deadly Sins by Colin Cotterill My rating: 3 of 5 stars Finally! Another Dr. Siri mystery. It seems like I've been waiting for this forever. We rejoin Dr. Siri Paiboun and his cohorts in late 1978. Dr. Siri's second resignation from the position of national coroner of Laos seems to have taken. The up side of this is that Dr. Siri is now retired. The down side is that Laos now has no national coroner. Retirement has not in any way dulled Dr. Siri's curiosity or his appetite for solving mysteries, so when the postman delivers a package to him that contains a traditional Laotian skirt that has a severed human finger sewn into the hem, he is, naturally, intrigued and determined to find out who sent it and what it means. From the pattern woven into the skirt, he is able to deduce that its origin is somewhere in the north of Laos. He proposes to his wife that they go on an adventure to the north of the country and trace the source of the mystery. Travel in Laos in ...

It seems that these Dr. Siri novels have become an addiction for me. As soon as I read that a new one had been published, I immediately requested it on my Kindle so that I could read it right away. I was not disappointed. It is another romp through 1978 Laos with Siri and his posse of oddball family and friends. Siri has finally managed to achieve his long desired goal of retiring from his post as the national coroner of Laos, but three months into his long awaited retirement, the 84-year-old doctor is called on again by his government to perform a service for them. The backstory is that a clairvoyant has told a Lao general that she can locate the remains of his long-dead brother so that they can be given a proper ceremony. The general is convinced to give her the opportunity and requests the pathologist's presence to verify the identity of the bones when they are excavated. But, back to that clairvoyant. Allegedly, she became clairvoyant and able to communicate with the dead by be...

The 74-year-old Dr. Siri has been trying to retire for years, but his country, 1978 Laos after the Pathet Lao revolution, just won't let him go. Now, though, it seems as if he might actually be able to achieve his long-held dream of retirement to spend his final years relaxing with his new wife and famous noodle shop owner, Madame Daeng. He shouldn't be counting the days, however, because his country has just one last assignment for him. In 1968, there was a helicopter crash somewhere in the northeast of the country. The pilot was never found and is listed as MIA. It was an American helicopter from Air America, a CIA operation. Ten years later, the Americans are still seeking those lost in their Southeast Asian wars and, for some reason, they now seem focused on this one pilot. Could it be because his father is now a powerful United States senator? At any rate, an American delegation, including another senator, arrives to conduct the search for the pilot and they must, of cours...

I am a big fan of Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri Paiboun series. Dr. Siri is really one of the most charming characters in all of the mystery genre and I always enjoy reading about his adventures and absorbing his gentle wisdom and view of the world. That being said, I was disappointed in this particular book. In trying to analyze just why, I came to the conclusion that it was because it tried to do too much. These stories take place in 1970s Laos, just after their revolution, as the new socialist government was trying to find its footing. Across the border in Cambodia, a much darker tale of transition was taking place. The Killing Fields were in full production. The population and the culture of the country were being systematically destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. In this book, Cotterill attempts to address that tragedy along with the more mundane events of Vientiane, if serial murders can ever be described as mundane. The contrast between Cambodia - Kampuchea - and the more benign soci...

There is a serial killer loose in peaceful Buddhist Laos.  (Yes, in 1978 the government was nominally socialist, following the revolution that overturned the Royalists, but the country's soul was still Buddhist.)  It is still a poverty-stricken country struggling to make its way in the world and provide better lives for its long-suffering people, but progress is dismayingly slow. Even with all its problems though, people had been able to trust each other on a personal day-to-day level, but now a wolf is loose in the peaceful fold and all of that may be changing. Not if the national coroner 73-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun can prevent it!  The killer comes to Siri's attention when the murdered body of a beautiful country girl is delivered to his morgue in Vientiane. She had been tied to a tree and strangled, but she had not, as the doctor had expected to find, been raped. However, her body had been violated in a particularly sickening fashion, enough to make Nurse Dtui and Mr....

Whenever Dr. Siri Paiboun gets called out of town for one of the interminable conferences he is expected to attend as Laos' national coroner, things seem to start popping at the Vientiane morgue where he works with his nurse Dtui and helper Mr. Geung. This time is no exception. While Siri is listening to boring lectures in the north of the country, a booby-trapped corpse is delivered to the morgue and only Nurse Dtui's quick wits save them all from catastrophe. Moreover, as soon as Siri left town, two auditors moved in to go over his records. But then the auditors are found dead at their posts, having eaten some poisoned cashew cakes that were meant for Siri and/or his staff. What is the meaning of this? A few months earlier, Siri had foiled a coup aimed at toppling the new Communist government of Laos. It seems that the attempts on his life may be the way that the instigators of the coup have chosen to repay him.  Meantime, the conference that the good doctor was attending bro...

Laos 1977. The Pathet Lao revolution has succeeded and the new Communist government is two years old. Unfortunately, it has not improved the lives of ordinary Laotians. The regime is bogged down in a mind-numbing welter of bureaucratic red tape. It seems impossible to actually get anything done. Some of the old revolutionaries who brought the new order into being are disillusioned with its results. It seems that a few may be so disillusioned that they are willing to throw the whole thing out and start over again. A coup against the two-year-old regime is being planned. All of this comes to light as the result of the death of a blind retired dentist. The man is run down by a runaway log truck on the streets of Vientiane. His body is brought to Dr. Siri's morgue. As the good doctor goes through his clothes, looking for identification, he finds a letter, written in code and in invisible ink. The enigmatic letters seem unfathomable. Siri and the local policeman Phosy take the letter to...

It is 1977. Dr. Siri Paiboun, the former Pathet Lao revolutionary and now reluctant national coroner of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, has again been summoned to a remote part of his country to look at a dead body. This time it is a body - an arm anyway - that is protruding from a recently built concrete walk that leads from the President's former cave hideout to his new house. Dr. Siri's task is to disinter the arm, see if there is a body attached, and find out how the body died and how it got into the wet cement.  Dr. Siri has taken his assistant Nurse Dtui with him on the trip to help in his investigation. They have left Mr. Geung, their mildly Down Syndrome-afflicted helper at the morgue in Vientiane, to take care of things while they are gone. Unfortunately, one of Siri's enemies in the Justice Ministry sees Geung as an embarrassment and a liability and he takes the opportunity of Siri's absence to have him kidnapped by the military and sent to the north...

After reading the first book in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series,  The Coroner's Lunch , I decided that I had not had enough of the good doctor and so I immediately started this second book in the series,  Thirty-Three Teeth . It is another charming study of Colin Cotterill's unique character, the 72-year-old Pathet Lao revolutionary, who, upon the success of the revolution in 1975, was drafted by the Party to become Laos' one and only coroner. In this entry, it is 1976 and something is killing women in Vientiane. It seems to be an animal of some sort, one which leaves the marks of its huge bite on the bodies. At first Dr. Siri suspects a bear, partly because he has recently seen a bear in one of his visionary dreams. Then he learns that a bear that had been housed in inhumane conditions in the city has escaped its cage and he feels that his surmise must have been correct. But his assistant, the redoubtable Dtui, begins to have her doubts and she learns from a Russian animal exp...

Laos 1975. The long Pathet Lao Revolution has succeeded. The monarchy has abdicated and the new communist regime is in the process of being formed.  Dr. Siri Paiboun had been a part of the long revolution. He has been a communist for 47 years, but he didn't really become one because of ideology. He became one out of love for a woman he met while studying in Paris. She was a committed communist and so, to please her, he joined the Party. The two were married and ultimately returned to Laos to join the struggle. Now that struggle has succeeded and Dr. Siri is 72 and looking forward to retirement and a reprieve from the long privation of life in the jungle. His beloved wife is long dead, killed in an explosion. She had been so devoted to the revolution that she had refused to have children and so Siri has no children or grandchildren. He is alone, but looking forward to a life of solitude. It is not to be. Siri is informed by a Party official that he has been designated to be the coun...